


this must be the place

by jaekyu



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements, but not really :/, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 01:36:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20685335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: Loving someone doesn't save them. (Or, weirder things have happened in Derry.)





	this must be the place

**Author's Note:**

> in which the kissing bridge is Kind of Supernatural (TM) and let's richie see eddie one last time.

I don't need any help to be breakable, believe me  
I know nobody else who can laugh along to any kind of joke  
I won't need any help to be lonely when you leave me

it'll be easy to cover  
gather my skeletons far inside

— SLIPPED, The National. 

_ When the past is always with you, it may as well be present; and if it is present, it will be future as well. _

— William Gibson

*

The knife is a cold, comfortable weight in Richie’s palm.

Everything about the last few days has felt like a fever dream, half-scrubbed from his memory now that it’s over. But the knife exists; it’s tangible. Richie closes a fist around it and releases it to be sure. Then he runs his thumb along the sharpest edge and the blade comes away wet with blood.

He’s not sure why he does it; drops to his knees on the rotting planks of the Kissing Bridge and use the blade to marr the wood. Maybe it’s for the same reasons he did it as a kid. He didn’t know how to say anything, but he wanted to prove it anyway. Richie needed proof. How could he be sure anything existed without proof? He did it because, somewhere along the way, he lost his voice and he didn’t know how to scream it as loud as he could, so he whispered into his own cupped palms instead. Then he put the words into a mason jar and hid the jar under his bed and it just sat and sat for years.

(Richie wishes he would have had the forethought to smash that stupid jar before it was too late.)

Richie puts the knife in his pocket and gets back into his car. He’s wearing a sweater that is — that _was_, he supposes — Eddie’s. It is soft and warm and kind of smells like Eddie, still. But everytime Richie tries to take a deep inhale of the scent is gets mixed with mud and death and blood in his brain.

When Richie pulls out and away from the bridge something tugs so violently on his heart his breath escapes him. It feels — awful. Like hearing a shout in the dark and not knowing where it’s coming from. Like leading someone and then turning around and finding them gone. All his muscles tense and his lungs scream at the lack of air.

Richie slams on the breaks and his tires screech. It takes him five minutes to catch his breath properly, eyes screwed shut and gripping the steering wheel so tight the leather creeks under his grip. He’s crying, just a few tears collecting in the corners of his eyes, and he’s not sure why.

He was going to leave Derry tonight. There is an overwhelming feeling that spreads slow from the center of Richie’s chest to all the furthest points of his limbs that tells him that he shouldn’t. He can’t.

When he finally makes it back to the Townhouse he asks if he can stay an extra night.

*

When Richie was eighteen he moved to LA. When Richie was almost nineteen his mom called him long-distance to tell him she was divorcing his dad.

She cried. Richie didn’t cry at all. He thought about the last Thanksgiving he spent with his parents. How his dad drank a bottle of wine to himself and yelled at Richie’s mom before they had even cut the turkey.

Richie always thought he had to appreciate his dad. That he wasn’t allowed to kind of hate him, that he couldn’t be mad at him. Some of his friends had much worse dads. Some of them had no dads at all.

He grew out of those ideas as he got older. After he understood that different types of pain we’re still, at the end of the day, just that. Pain.

Near the end of the call, Richie says, “I just hope you’re okay, Mom.”

She’s not crying anymore. There’s just a quivering in her voice, sounding sad and hopeless in a way that breaks Richie’s heart. “I still love him, you know?” She tells Richie. “But, Richie. Richie, loving someone doesn’t save them.”

*

Richie wanders around Derry for a few hours, not sure what he’s trying to find or what he’s waiting to find him. He feels chased by a ghost. He feels like the victim in a horror movie. There’s something just out of frame that he can’t see, but everyone else knows it’s coming.

Derry looks the same as it did twenty-seven years ago, Richie realizes now that he finally has the time to pause and look properly at it. No one has even tried to spit-shine this place since he left at eighteen. Even without a murderous clown it’s a hell hole. It makes Richie feel homesick for a feeling he’s not sure exists anymore.

God, he wishes he had gone home (or, at least, back to the place he calls home but has never really felt that way). He could still go home. The sun hasn’t set yet. He could go home. But the thought makes bile rise in his throat. Something scratches at the back of his consciousness, says in a voice that isn’t Richie’s own but is still familiar:

_Not yet, Richie. Not yet._

*

(Richie is thirteen. His mouth never stops moving even when he grits his teeth and flexes his jaw. Sometimes people get mad at him. Eddie never gets mad at him. Only fake mad at him and only if Richie really deserves it. Only if he’s ever being a little shit. To Eddie, specifically. Richie knows he never makes Eddie mad in a way that actually counts. Because Eddie still tells people Richie Tozier is his best friend.

_Not yet, Richie. Not yet._

Richie is fourteen and a half. Eddie clambers into the hammock next to him. Eddie’s legs are warm and sticky. Richie’s fingers stick to the pages of his comic book because they’re still kind of covered in ice cream. Somewhere in their clubhouse, Mike is talking. Richie is only half-listening. The hammock’s not even that great: it’s itchy and scratchy and smells sort of stale and there’s at least a dozen spiders they’ve caught on it. Richie isn’t even sure why Eddie wants to sit in it at all. But Richie doesn’t say anything. He’s gotten better at keeping his mouth shut. He bites his tongue until he tastes blood now. He’s got secrets worth keeping now. It was worth it to learn how. Richie puts his hand on Eddie’s leg. Thinks about moving it lower to circle two fingers around the protruding bone of Eddie’s small, little ankle, or moving it higher to rest his palm against Eddie’s knee.

_Not yet, Richie. Not yet._

Richie is fifteen and him and Eddie are the last two awake at a sleepover. They sneak down the stairs in their socks and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in Bill’s kitchen. Eddie’s in pajamas and he looks so soft and sweet. He needs a haircut, hair falling into his eyes and down a little farther than normal around his ears. Richie could stare at him long enough to find the pattern in his moles and freckles. A big glob of jelly leaks out of Eddie’s sandwich when he bites into it, and it gets all of his fingers and his chin. If Richie wanted too he could reach up and wipe it off with his thumb.

_Not yet, Richie. Not yet._

Richie is sixteen and he’s drunk. He gets sad a lot these days. Eddie keeps asking him about it. Of course Eddie keeps asking him about it. Richie doesn’t know how to tell Eddie that Richie is pretty sure the only reason his mom stays with his dad is for him. Richie is so drunk and he feels like throwing up. He feels like (_finally, finally_) kissing Eddie more.

_Not yet, Richie. Not yet._

Richie is seventeen. Eddie’s laughing at one of his jokes. He wonders how he’ll ever know if he never tries.

_Not yet, Richie. Not yet._

Richie is eighteen and he is leaving. Richie is leaving and Eddie is crying. Richie is leaving, Eddie is crying and Richie’s heart is breaking because he loves him so much. He’s trying to find the words to tell Eddie something, anything. Every time Richie feels like he might get his grip around one it breaks away from him. He’s coming up empty. When he was younger he didn’t know how to stop talking and then he taught himself. Now, here, while the sunset makes Eddie look like he’s on fire, all orange and pink and yellow, Richie wishes he hadn’t. _I’m not crying, asshole._ Eddie says. _I’m mad at you. What the fuck am I supposed to do in this shitty town without you._ Richie catches Eddie in a headlock. None to graciously, Eddie smashes his palms against his cheeks to rub away the wetness. _Don’t sweat it, Eddie Spaghetti. I’ll be back to visit. And then --_

_And then, and then, and then_

And then Richie is twenty and he doesn’t even remember who Eddie is.

Not yet, Richie. Not yet.)

*

Richie Tozier is convinced he is the single most focal point of the universes twisted sense of humour. Case and point: when he opens his hotel room door and Eddie Kaspbrak is standing behind it.

Richie just kind of -- stops and stares for a few beats. The doorknob is suddenly slippery in Richie’s clammy grip. No one says anything. And then Richie says, “are you a fucking ghost?”

“Uh,” Eddie replies. Like, with his vocal chords in his own voice in a way that feels real and like it exists on this fucking plane. Richie’s heart is about to fall out of his ass. “I’m not sure,” Eddie looks down at himself, pats his chest, pinches his arm, touches his own face and hair. “I’m not really sure how to answer that, Richie. But I don’t - I don’t think so?”

“What the fuck.” Richie deadpans.

“Tell me about it.”

“Y’know, you like --” the words catch in Richie’s throat the way a pill catches when you try and dry swallow it. “You - Eddie, you - you _died_, Eddie.” And it was awful, Richie doesn’t say. It was awful. I tried to keep your fucking guts inside of you with my bare hands. I left for one second and when I came back, you were gone.

Eddie swallows. “Yeah. I know that, Richie.”

Richie watches Eddie’s chest rise and fall with each of his inhales and exhales. He’s wearing the same clothes he wore that night: the same t-shirt and sweater and jeans that he ruined with his blood. Only they’re not ruined. They’re immaculate looking, the way all of Eddie’s clean clothes do. There’s not even a tear in the t-shirt from when --

“This isn’t some fucked up hallucination, is it?” Richie suddenly panics. “Because I’m over seeing shit that isn’t actually there. And we killed It. We killed It and I haven’t done any hallucinogens recently, so there’s really no reason for me to be dealing with this.”

“Richie,” Eddie starts, but then stops just as quickly and quirks an eyebrow. “Wait - _recently_?”

“I moved out at eighteen, Eds, and I moved to L.A. We’re all very lucky all I did was drop acid a few times and didn’t develop a serious coke habit.” Richie remembers, then, that he’s talking to his best friend who was dead when Richie woke up this morning. Fuck. It was so easy to kind of forget. Richie scrubs a hand over his face. “No, wait. You’re avoiding the question. Are you avoiding the question because I’m right? I’m right, aren’t I? I’m having some sort of, I don’t know, grief-wrought hallucination. Those are a thing, right. Fuck. I should call my therapist.”

“Richie. Richie. Calm down. You’re going a mile a minute.” Eddie takes a step towards him. Richie resists the urge to take a step back. “I’m not. I don’t know what the fuck I am but I know I’m here, for real. Or as real as I can be, okay? Here.”

Eddie extends his hand, palm up. The gnarled scar that is now missing Richie’s palm is still present on Eddie’s. Richie just stands there, for a moment. He examines the juxtaposition of the man-made line that cuts across Eddie’s palm and the lines that came to be there naturally. Then, tentatively, Richie lifts his own hand and touches the pads of his finger, featherlight, to the scar. The pair of them inhale sharply.

And see, the thing about Richie is that he’s always liked proof. He’s always liked things that are tangible. The scar is puckered, but still smooth and soft. It feels like skin. It feels like Eddie. And it’s warm, too, like there’s blood pumping through it. Like Eddie is here, right now. Like this isn’t some hallucination, someone playing a trick on Richie, Richie’s brain playing a trick on itself.

Richie’s always like tangible proof. And, well, if this isn’t tangible proof then Richie isn’t sure what is. And that raises another question:

What now?

It feels like the whole room exhales around them. The tight line of Richie’s shoulder relaxes. The corner of Eddie’s mouth quirks up into a smile. Then, he says, “isn’t that my sweater?”

*

They sit on Richie’s bed and talk for a long time.

Richie takes some additional convincing before his heart stops beating like hummingbird wings. Eddie tries to explain what he can. He tells Richie’s that he’s not sure what happened. Just that one moment, Eddie wasn’t anywhere, and then he was here. That something just told him this was Richie’s room, the day after everything, and that Eddie had to wait for Richie to get back. So he did. He didn’t even have to wait very long.

Weirder things have happened in Derry.

Periodically, Eddie will lift his arm, palm up, and Richie will run two fingers along Eddie’s scar. As if it’s the strongest thread to tether this whole thing together.

“I don’t —” Eddie says, sounding like this has been something he’s been working up to. “I don’t think I’ll be here for very long, though.” The words hit the air like a cinder block, falling flat and heavy between them. Even though Richie sort of feels like he knew that already.

This funny thing happens after that: that voice in Richie’s head, the one that was always telling him, not yet -- not quite him but not a stranger -- says something that sounds like, _okay, Richie. Here we go, Richie. Now’s the time, Richie._

But Richie can’t.

*

(Eddie died.

Eddie died and Richie sat in the murky waters of the quarry and cried and didn’t even try to stitch himself back together. When he got back to his hotel room he took a shower and tried not to cry as leftovers of Eddie’s blood washed away down the drain. Richie was losing more and more pieces of him as the seconds ticked by. Richie let the water fill his mouth so it felt less like he was choking on his own grief. He sat on the edge of the bed, wet and cold, and felt like he might never feel warm again. He tried to memorize every detail of Eddie’s face. Would have tattooed on the back of his eyelids if he could. Carved it into his skull. Caught the memory in his palm and held it until it blistered and scarred.

Eddie was forty when he died. Richie is forty and has to keep the first words he says to Eddie when he sees him just standing in Richie’s hotel room from being _I missed you, I love you, I don’t know what I’ll do if you leave again_

But, somehow, he can’t --)

*

Eddie died.

Eddie died and Richie has no idea how long he’ll be back for and he can’t just _say it_, he can’t make himself form the words. Richie’s been keeping them from everyone, and Eddie, and himself for so long. They buzz around in Richie’s head like a kicked hornet's nest and every once and awhile one of them stings. Just say it, Richie, say it, say it, say it —

In the end he doesn’t have to. In the end, Eddie does it for him.

“I love you,” Eddie says. And it’s like the dam holding back all these parts of Richie for twenty-seven years cracks, right down the middle, and water starts leaking out just a little, and before anyone knows it, everything is bursting.

“I love _you_,” Richie sobs. “Like, since we were fucking kids. I only messed with you so much because I wanted an excuse to talk to you. And I wanted you to pay attention to me. I think I kind of hated it when you paid attention to anyone that wasn’t me. You know that, right?”

“I know, Richie.”

“I love you,” Richie repeats, more to himself than anything. His face is in his hands. “But it doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

“Richie,” Eddie breathes. He _breathes_, like he’s not in some limbo between death and life in this very moment. Like he’s really here, all flesh and bone and the inherent kinetic energy present in all human beings. Like Richie didn’t get Eddie’s blood all over his hands and then left him all alone in a god forsaken eldritch horror cavern. Like any of this matters. Like Richie loving Eddie, now, after everything, will somehow manage to save him.

_Loving someone doesn’t save them._

“It matters,” Eddie says despite all of that, “it matters, Richie.”

Eddie kisses him.

And see, that’s the worst part of this whole thing: that this feels tangible. That this is the knife, with it’s weighted obviousness in Richie’s hand, with the way it made that little tear in Richie’s skin, the way it cut open wood in gouges. Because, right now, with his mouth on Richie’s mouth and Richie gripping the sleeves on Eddie’s sweater tight and white-knuckled, Eddie feels tangible. He feels real. But he can’t be real. Not in a way that’s permanent.

What’s that old saying? _Nothing gold can stay_.

Richie wishes he wasn’t so — so fucking sad, and weak, and spineless. Maybe then he’d pull away from Eddie, put some distance between them, and not let himself have these snatched away moments that will never come close enough together to form a whole. Richie could use the strongest thread in the world, try to stitch this all together, and the universe would still find the sharpest blade and cut every string in excruciating slowness.

Richie feels like a few of them have been cut already.

He doesn’t pull away from Eddie. He kisses him back, slow and warm. The dread eating his stomach from the inside out subsides the more Richie let’s his thoughts on this — the jumbled mess of them, trying to understand what is happening here, trying to make sense of this situation — fall by the wayside.

Somehow, Eddie feels realer in this moment then he’s ever felt in Richie’s entire life.

“I wish,” Richie starts. _I wish it could have been me instead of you._

“Do not fucking,” Eddie cuts him off. “Do not fucking finish that sentence, Richie. Not while I can still hear you.”

Okay, Richie thinks but doesn’t say out loud. His tongue is tangled with his heart in his throat and he’s afraid if he opens his mouth what will come leaping out. So he kisses Eddie again and swallows it all down.

*

The sun was setting when Richie came back to his hotel room, day fading away to night. In the theatrics that followed, Richie had never turned a light on, either. Which means now that the sun has left without a goodbye, the room is almost pitch black.

They’re still kissing. Eddie is sitting in Richie’s lap and they’re just kissing, everything quiet but the slick sounds of their mouths moving together. Richie still can’t quite wrap his head around the reality of Eddie being a constant, real, heavy weight in his lap.

He’s resolved to stop thinking about it altogether.

Just letting Eddie kiss him and kissing Eddie in return is much nicer.

In the half-light of the moon coming through the blinds, Richie can watch Eddie pull away and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. “I, uh,” Eddie mumbles, “I used to want to do this a lot. When we were younger. Probably why I feel like a dumbass horny teenager right now.”

“I make you horny, baby?” Richie smirks. Eddie pinches Richie’s earlobe.

“There was one time when we were younger where I really thought,” Eddie’s gaze drops from Richie’s, his lip caught between his teeth. “I really thought you were finally gonna make a move. You remember, that party we had at Ben’s place? I think we were, I think we were sixteen and we sat around the fire and had beer for the first time. And you got - you got so fucked up, Richie.” Eddie snorts. “But, y’know, right before you fucking yacked all over my shoes, I swear you were looking at me like you were gonna kiss me.”

Richie doesn’t know how to say, I was. I was but then I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I’m sorry.

He doesn’t know how to say all of that so he doesn’t. He kisses Eddie instead. Richie hopes he conveys at least some of what he means to say out loud is the movement of his lips against Eddie’s.

Then, Eddie pulls away again. Richie really wishes he would stop doing that. Only then, Eddie says, “there’s another thing I really wanted to do when we were teenagers, too,” and he’s sliding out of Richie’s lap, sliding off the edge of the bed, and kneeling between the spread of Richie’s leg, pushing on either of his knees to make the space just a little wider.

Okay, Richie thinks, maybe he can forgive Eddie for pulling away.

Shit is un-fucking-believable when Eddie gets Richie’s pants halfway down his legs and Eddie starts putting his mouth against newly exposed skin. Richie is so, so glad he decided to stop thinking about the logistics of all this. Even more so when Eddie is touching Richie’s dick through his underwear, taking Richie’s dick out of his underwear, putting his mouth on it. Eddie’s is wet and white hot and so _good_.

Richie can’t stop touching Eddie all over. It’s like with every new sharing of skin, this gets realer and realer. Richie likes proof. Eddie’s mouth and his hair and stubble against his jaw and the way his jaw curves into his throat, curves into his chest is proof. The growing pool of heat Richie’s stomach is proof.

It’s been, like, thirty fucking years. Richie deserves this. They both do.

(And if Richie feels the scar on Eddie’s palm where it rests against his bare thigh, he doesn’t say anything. Pretends he doesn’t feel it at all. Doesn’t acknowledge the constant reminder that Eddie, after all of this, is trapped somewhere that Richie can’t follow.)

*

It’s almost five in the morning, and Richie would do anything if it meant he didn’t have to fall asleep.

“You’re exhausted,” Eddie says. They’re laying next to each other on Richie’s bed. Richie’s gripping Eddie’s hand in his as hard as he can without Eddie actually being able to notice the pressure of it.

“Yeah,” Richie takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. “But pretty soon I’m gonna close my eyes and when I open them again you’ll be gone.”

Eddie smiles. It’s the saddest fucking smile Richie has ever seen. “You don’t know that.”

They both know Eddie’s lying. Richie doesn’t call him out on it.

Moments pass in quiet. Richie stays awake and Eddie stays right next to him. Then Richie yawns.

“Go to bed, shit for brains.” Eddie digs the knuckle on his middle finger into Richie’s upper arm, a sharper version of a punch, to punctuate his sentence.

Sleep has Richie tight in her grasp. He knows it's only a matter of time before she pulls him into her deep, unmoving, dark waters. “Should I say goodbye before I pass the fuck out, Eds? Sayonara, auf wiedersehen. So long and thanks for all the fish. See you in another life, brother.”

Eddie laughs at the roll call of Richie’s different voices, even though they’re all shit. “Tell me goodbye when you wake up, dumbass.”

“You got it.” Richie replies. His eyelids are drooping now, getting heavier and heavier. “As long as you promise to not sneak out in the middle of the night like a one night stand, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Promise.”

Richie laughs. He laughs because he knows it doesn’t matter what Eddie promises. He laughs because he’s sad.

His last thought before sleep finally takes him is that he should kiss Eddie one last time. But Richie’s already too far gone by the time it passes his mind.

*

(Richie has this conversation with Eddie in his head:

_You know the whole ghost business, right? You’re around cause of unfinished business, y’know? Score to settle and all that jazz._

_I’m not a ghost, Richie, but go on._

_You’re right, fair enough. You’re not Swayze and I’m definitely not Demi Moore. But my point stands. Unfinished business, you get what I’m saying about that?_

_Yeah. I get it. _

_My point is: maybe if I forget to kiss you right at the end, there, you’ll have to stick around a little longer._)

*

In the morning, the only thing that warms the bed is the sunlight coming through the window.

Richie curls his fingers into the blankets so hard his knuckles look like shards of glass through his skin.

And then he cries.

*

Richie is finished crying by the time he puts Derry in his rearview mirror. There’s no tug in his heart this time. No voice at the back of his head, where his neck meets the rest of his spine. The sadness and the pain still exist, but he’s found an odd sort of catharsis in it now.

Richie always liked proof. And now here it is.

When Richie stops for gas, the person filling up the car next to him smiles at him. Richie smiles a little back.

He almost looks like Eddie, Richie thinks.

Almost.

*

_Promise I don’t forget you this time, Eds?_

_Promise._

**Author's Note:**

> title from [Talking Heads.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVrVY540xdc) Partial summary from [The National](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHualEY9DJs). The line "loving someone doesn't save them" is from [Mommy](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3612616/), written by Xavier Dolan. 
> 
> I will read over this again and try at fix errors at some point when it's not 3AM and I feel like my eyeballs are leaking out of my skull.


End file.
